Trenton Freedom plan to succeed where others have failed

Freedom head coach Kevin O'Hanlon looks on Jan. 18 at an open tryout. (For The Trentonian/ JOHN BLAINE)

LANGHORNE, Pa. — Dennis Williams decided his fate a year ago on a rough patch of turf. A blindsided hit on a kickoff left Williams, 43, playing one season of semi-pro football as a bucket-list item with the New Jersey Bulldawgs, in a forced state of reflection.

“I got laid out,” Williams said. “As I’m laying there on the ground contemplating a major concussion I just suffered, I realized, ‘You know, I think I’d make a better owner than a player.’”

It is why Williams, partnering with fellow attorney Michael Schubinger, is sitting in a law office conference room explaining his plan for the Trenton Freedom, the Sun National Bank Center’s fourth attempt at a professional franchise in nearly a decade.

He says he understands the hurdles that await a season that begins March 30. The front office must ramp up promotions. Williams’s head coach, Kevin O’Hanlon, has to fill out a roster. Financial constraints tug at Williams’s budget.

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But a deeper culture of organizational instability within Trenton’s past could prove the Freedom’s biggest obstacle. Williams, a McCorristin graduate, hopes he has learned from mistakes that forced previous ownership groups to flee the Capitol City.

“It’s like any other business: If that were to happen, then, yes, I’m going to have to make a decision and my partner’s going to have to make a decision, too,” said Williams, wearing an unbuttoned red Freedom polo and thin-rimmed glasses. “I think the difference between us and those other teams is that decision’s not going to be made at the end of this season. We know we’re losing money this season. ... Same thing with next year — that’s a decision that, if I have to make, I’m going to make years from now, not tomorrow, not at the end of the 2014 season or even at the end of the 2015 season. It’s a decision I hope I never have to make.”

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Kevin O’Hanlon strolls across the Sun National Bank Center’s slippery turf Jan. 18, a nondescript “Swashbucklers” logo still faded at midfield. More than 100 players are here for a tryout, the second before the Freedom begin training camp in nearly a month.

O’Hanlon once yearned for an interview with the Trenton Steel, who called the 8,000-seat arena home for six games in 2012. A failed venture with the Trenton Lightning preceded it eight years earlier.

The Trenton Titans, a minor-league hockey team that spent 14 years along Hamilton Avenue, folded less than a year ago.

Their former coach, Vince Williams (no relation to Dennis Williams), filed a lawsuit against Delaware Valley Sports Group, Blue Line Sports and former Titans president and CEO Rich Lisk, alleging unfulfilled assets from his contract. Fans said they had not been reimbursed for ticket purchases.

Lisk did not respond to emails requesting comment.

“Are we going to have to work to get some of (the fans) back? Yes. That’s just the way it is,” O’Hanlon, 41, said in a phone interview. “It’s an unfortunate situation. I wish there wasn’t the past that’s been there. I kind of sit back and say a lot that we’re paying for somebody else’s sins.”

Sun National Bank Center officials took notice. It is why negotiations with Dennis Williams’s mostly four-party concept team were lengthier than teams’ past, said Claudio Oliveira, general manager of the arena.

Oliveira lauded Williams’s pitch, a three-to-five-year plan that involved market research, community outreach and a philosophy that modeled the Trenton Thunder, the Yankees’ Double-A affiliate and Trenton’s longest-tenured franchise.

“We 100 percent wanted to wrap our arms around this ownership group,” said Oliveira, who was not involved in previous team contracts. “I can be honest and say right from the original meetings I heard some things from this group I hadn’t heard before.”

Still, big-picture issues remain.

Phone calls to the Professional Indoor Football League reveal a non-working number. Trenton’s median household income is nearly half the state average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And the Freedom must make up for growing fan apathy stemming from past franchises’ transgressions.

Williams expects a slow start but insists financial losses from an owner’s perspective are different.

“If (fans) suddenly see the Freedom lost $50,000 their first year, they’re thinking, ‘Oh my god, $50,000? They won’t be back next year,’” said Williams, whose capital comes from several business ventures. “(Co-owner) Mike (Schubinger) and I are like, ‘We only lost $50,000? That’s less than we thought we were going to lose.’”

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Deep inside the law office of Acosta & Williams, which doubles as the Freedom’s headquarters, rests a white-erase board littered with the Sun National Bank Center’s layout, logistical issues and potential theme nights, among others.

Williams’s conceptual stages are over. The board is proof. Nine weeks remain until the Freedom host the Richmond Raiders, an afternoon Williams hopes will springboard them amid a financially depressed region.

“I think a big part of that is doing what we did with the arena,” Williams said, “and telling the public, ‘Hey, we’re for real. If you buy a ticket, there’s going to be a game to go to.’”

For various reasons, previous ownership groups left that in doubt.

Still, Williams says more than 100 season ticket holders have signed on, along with improving single-game sales. Thirty-three ad spaces light up the arena’s top tier, some of which have pre-existing exclusive rights.

Williams is still exploring other options, including selling naming rights to the field. Along with the PIFL logo, each football will read “Acosta & Williams, LLC”.

It is what O’Hanlon hopes is one of many signs that distance the Freedom from the arena’s previous occupants.

“I would love to sit back and say I completely expect us to be embraced with open arms and everyone’s happy, but the Steel left. They were just gone,” said O’Hanlon, a Bensalem native. “We’re also getting feedback and pushback from the hockey team that just up and left. Fans are fans. They’re going to be fans. They’re going to think whoever plays in the Sun National Bank Center are the same owners that owned the Titans, the same owners that owned the Steel and they all left. There’s nothing you can do other than sit back and say we’re completely different ownership.”

O’Hanlon would stop in to Steel games after practice as an indoor league assistant. Attendance numbers impressed him. Williams alleviated his concerns.

Still, there a no promises in an unforgiving business. Trenton is living, unavoidable proof. And Williams knows better than to speak in absolutes.

“In any business,” he said, “you should always have an exit strategy.”